NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo was taken in by a painfully obvious deepfake of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking about a controversial Sydney Sweeney ad on the floor of Congress.
The newsman, who once held a primetime slot on CNN, raged on Wednesday about a clip posted to Instagram by the account MemeRunnerGPT. The video shows a recreation of AOC on Capitol Hill, delivering a speech that includes phrases like “sultry little temptress” and “ocean-blue eyes that could resurrect the Führer from his grave in Argentina.”
“Nothing about Hamas or people burning Jews’ cars…but Sweeney jeans ad?” Cuomo asked of the video, whose watermark read “parody 100% made with AI.” “Deserved time on floor of Congress? What [happened] to this party?”
AOC responded directly to Cuomo’s post to let him know he’d been had.
“This is a deepfake, dude. Please use your critical thinking skills,” she wrote. “At this point, you’re just reposting Facebook memes and calling it journalism.”
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, asked the one-time anchor of “Good Morning America” why the post was still up. Journalist Paul Blest compared the AI-generated clip to a “banana peel” and said Cuomo had slipped and torn “both ACLs.”
Cuomo has since deleted the post and attempted to reply to AOC without tagging her.
“You are correct that was a deepfake (but it really does sound like you),” he wrote on X.
Sweeney’s ad for American Eagle has inspired days of backlash (and backlash to the backlash). The denim campaign, which centers on a pun of “good genes,” has been accused of carrying eugenicist undertones. Conservatives, including President Donald Trump, have come to the actress’s defense.
“Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ‘em, Sydney!” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “The tide has seriously turned — Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be.”
